Onsite Enhancement Activities
Sessions 1 & 2
July 5 – 13 and July 15 – 23, 2024
Health and Healing
Lujong
Drawing the Awakened Heart
Debate
Space Awareness
The above enhancement activities will be offered onsite only due to the interactive nature of these courses.
LUJONG
Lujong, or body training, is a series of fifteen physical exercises developed by the Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso Rinpoche to help us enhance our health and synchronize our body and mind, thereby increasing energy and pliancy. The wakefulness that we develop from these exercises can bring a quality of meditation to ordinary activities throughout the day.
Science of Creativity and the Arts:
Drawing the Awakened Heart
This studio course will be tailored to the different levels of skill and experience of the participants. The thangka skills presented will range from creating the iconometric graph (tikse), to drawing out a representation of awakening, such as a Tara or Shakyamuni Buddha, to completely drawing out the figure, and potentially creating a finished painting. This course is suitable for beginners and beyond, regardless of your artistic talent. You will receive individual attention. It is an especially nice complement to the Summer Institute’s shedra and gomdra studies as it brings the body into the sphere of the contemplative activity of awakening on many levels. This course incorporates the class contents from both SCA 540 Studio 1 and SCA 550 Studio 2.
Click here for details about SCA 540 and SCA 550.
JULIA LINDEROVA
DEBATE
Join Nitartha faculty members in this lively and interactive activity. You will be led through a process of using the ideas presented in your shedra courses to play with them in a clear way by defining, analyzing, examining and exploring their meaning. You will then learn how to reformulate those study topics in the context of debating them. By learning to use the principles of debate, you can gain more certainty in the views that are taught in your shedra courses.
SPACE AWARENESS
Space Awareness is a series of physical and vocal exercises derived from the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, as presented in the West by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. These exercises utilize the body as a means of clarifying mental confusion and taming the mind, allowing you to access a greater awareness of outer and inner space. The workshop format of the course enables you to gain an experiential basis from which to investigate Buddhist approaches to concepts such as “space” and “ego” while discovering how they can correct physical and mental imbalances. Class exercises will help you to develop a sense of well-being and an appreciation of yourself and others in the context of a live and ever-changing space.
Click here to read about the connection between Space Awareness and Mahamudra!
Times: 2:00 - 3:00 pm every other day, beginning on Sunday July 9, 2023
FACULTY
MITRA LEE WORLEY
HEALTH AND HEALING FOR MEDITATORS:
DRAWING FROM THE TIBETAN TRADITION
This course is based on teachings from the Tibetan tradition as taught by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche and the Vidyadhara Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, as well as from western medicine.
We will begin with the topic of intrinsic health. Then, we will explore our inner abilities of natural balance and awareness. These abilities enable us to skillfully chart a healthy course for ourselves and others. We then continue by exploring the role of dualism in our health, such as hot and cold in our bodies, inflammation and sluggishness. After that, we will explore systems of healing in Tibetan Meditation as examples of the previous principles, such as its division of phenomena into three, four or five aspects, such as earth, water, fire, wind and space.
FACULTY
Dr. PHIL WEBER